Ruby Rare’s Queering Love picks
By Ruby Rare
Ruby Rare’s Queering Love picks
By Ruby Rare
As part of LGBTQIA+ history month, I’m sharing some of my favourite books on queer love. From historic gay and sapphic romance, to celebrating filth in all its finery, to questioning the scripts our intimate connections have followed for generations, and how we’re rewriting our own rules. I really hope you enjoy this collection, and it gets you thinking more curiously about love in all its forms.
The Non-Monogamy Playbook: Exploring Polyamory and Open Relationships with Confidence
Ruby Rare
£16.99 £16.14sorry to plug my own book, but I’m gonna plug my own book. Now non-monogamy is absolutely not the same as queerness, but they do share parallels (existing in contrast to normative structures, building relationships in a more DIY way, and facing backlash and stigma as a result), and I wrote the book with the idea of queering relationships in mind. If you’re curious to learn more about open relationships, give this a go. I promise I hold your hand gently through it all, while also encouraging you to think more expansively about how you weave love and connection into your life.
Outrage: How To Fight for LGBTQ+ Lives
Ellen Jones
£20.00 £19.00queer love cannot exist outside of politics. Ellen Page’s new book explores the historical and current inequalities the LGBTQIA+ community has to endure, and demands a better future for us all.
Hera Lindsay Bird
Hera Lindsay Bird
£9.99 £9.49my fave unhinged poet. Hera Lindsey Birds’s unyielding horny energy is unparalleled, if you’ve not experienced it before you’re in for a treat.
Will I Ever Have Sex Again?: A disarmingly honest and funny exploration of sex (and those who aren't having it)
Sofie Hagen
£18.99 £18.04my favourite non-fiction book of last year, Sofie Hagen is stunning and writes with such vulnerability and humour. It’s also a brilliant example of trauma-informed writing, and a testimony to how queer-ing our understandings of intimacy is transformative.
100 Boyfriends
Brontez Purnell
£9.99 £9.49messy, filthy, divine. Too often we wind up santising queer intimacy (which is fair enough when a lot of the world is hell-bent on hypersexualising and sensationalising us), and Brontez Purnell’s work is a welcome antidote.
Rubyfruit Jungle: A Novel
Rita Mae Brown
£9.99 £9.49I read this classic 70s coming-of-age lesbian novel as a baby queer and it completely opened up my world: reminding me queer women have always existed, albeit historically in the shadows, how exciting it is to discover these parts of yourself and find a sense of home with other queers, and how fragile our existence and rights have been, then and now.
Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems
£12.00 £11.40
a stunning (and very gay) poetry collection housing the full range of human emotions. Sweet, soft, tender, passionate, and devastating, it’s a beautiful anthology.